![]() ![]() ![]() In that case, we recommend Ultimate Adventures (from Rough Guides) for all your camel-trekking-in-the-Sahara, rock-climbing-at-Joshua-tree, Pacuare-River-rafting needs. Perhaps, though, you beg for the real thing. Revealing the strange secret at the heart of this book would spoil it, so suffice to say that the short novel enigmatically investigates slavery and colonialism in ways that beg for closer analysis. In Bone, protagonist Fone Bone lugs around a massive copy of Melville’s masterpiece Moby-Dick everywhere he goes–and while that book is undoubtedly a desert island classic, Benito Cereno is an underappreciated gem of a tale. A major literary accomplishment that has been unjustly overlooked.Īlso somewhat overlooked is Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno. We use the word “delightful” here in an absolutely unpejorative sense, friends: the adventures of Fone Bone, his cousins Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, and Thorn, Granma Rose, and the Red Dragon are epic in scope yet retain an honest humor that will keep in the most cynical folks laughing. On the lighter-but-not-too-much-lighter side, Jeff Smith’s self-published comic Bone is fantastic even better, you can get the entire 1300 page run of the whole series in Bone: One Volume Edition. The word “harrowing” fits well, gentle readers. Everest, and the disasters that befell his expedition. If you prefer your adventure tales uncomplicated by postmodern gambits, check out John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, a journalistic account of the writer’s 1996 ascent of Mt. It’s also a really cool adventure story, the tale of John Franklin’s nineteenth-century exploration of Inuit territory. William Vollman’s The Rifles, part of his as-yet-unfinished Seven Dreams series is a brilliant engagement of history, colonialism, identity, and all of those Big Profound Issues that we so adore in our modern literature. To help you get started, check out the following tales of adventure. Indulge yourself this summer by taking a fantastic voyage–literary or literally. Plenty of resources and lots of electronic texts: your source for all things Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and more. And if you like it, check out Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, which tackles the back-story of a certain crazy lady in the attic who didn’t exactly get a voice in Jane Eyre.įinally, if you want to get very specific, don’t hesitate to search the Romantic Circles website. Truly a romantic classic, but also a fine comment on gender, class, and social mores in general. We finally read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre last summer, and believe it or not, the book is pretty great. Also, unlike Henry Miller’s Tropic books, you’ll actually finish this one. Ugly, unforgiving, honest, and hilarious, Women is one of my favorite books. ![]() This rambling novel follows alter-ego Henry Chinaski’s late-in-life successful turn with the ladies. If you like your love stories rougher around the edges, check out Charles Bukowski’s only masterpiece, Women. The recipe section at the end is the sweetest dessert (ok, I swear I’m done now). Sly, smart, and occasionally sexy, Vapnyar’s tales of dislocated immigrants continue to linger on the palate long after they’ve been digested (sorry!). Great stuff–and romance is right in the title.įor lighter yet still substantial fare, check out Lara Vapnyar’s Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love, a delicious collection of snack-sized short stories (please, please, please forgive this awful extended metaphor). Free lovin’, amorous passions, and, uh, farming. The Blithedale Romance is a fictionalized account of Hawthorne’s time on Brooke Farm–here called Blithedale–an attempt at a utopian commune founded by artists and free-thinkers. Why not start with an overlooked, under-read classic from American Renaissance master Nathaniel Hawthorne. ![]() You don’t have to read harlequin schlock to get romantically fulfilled on the beach this year. ![]()
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